Anthem

Synopsis

Anthem is written by Ayn Rand, A Russian born American novelist with multifaceted personalities as philosopher, screenwriter and playwright. Before moving her career to non-fiction works, she had written many novels including her best sellers “The Fountainhead ” and ”Atlas Shrugged”.

Anthem is a dystopian novel based on the theme, the world has reentered another dark age where individuality is eliminated and equality becomes a blind acceptance. A mankind with peculiar rules for living such as whoever pronounce “I” will be killed, people sent to a specific place once in a year for sex, having friends is a crime, calling brother is a crime and invention is banned.

Characters in this novel are christened peculiarly as Equality 7-2521 (A 21 years old Man) , Liberty 5-3000 (a Brave Girl) , International 4-8818 ( an Artist) , and Union 5-3992. The story narrated by Equality 7-2521 about his past and his proficiency in academics and his desire for invention of new things. In contrast to his desires, Equality 7-2521 is assigned the job as street sweeper. He goes hiding in a tunnel and secretly doing a research and invents the light bulb. While he was thrilled to announce his invention, he has been punished and his invention was about to be destroyed. He flees with his invention and reaches Uncharted Forest, the area which has been named as threshold by the Dark Age world.

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